The Man in the Arena

Indeed, Trump has knocked down one political convention after another, and thrived. He insulted John McCain for being a POW in Vietnam—nothing happened. He claimed George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—nothing happened. He refused to condemn David Duke when asked point blank—nothing happened. He did not build a campaign infrastructure, develop detailed policy positions, or hire professionals to take the pulse of voters—and won the nomination anyway.

Meanwhile, the political class has responded to Trump by relying evermore on the established order he has disrupted. When Trump rose in the polls, the other candidates attacked each other, to set up a one-on-one with Trump. As the field winnowed, politicos corralled their resources to run millions in attack ads against him. When Trump built a delegate lead, they dug deep into the RNC rules, trying to identify a path by which Trump could be stopped from acquiring enough delegates. All of this was to no discernible effect: The anti-Trump forces were consistently playing defense against the insurgent, relying on a conventional playbook that had stood them in good stead for generations. Trump plowed right through their defenses.

Ironically, Trump is now hoping that the political class remains stubbornly committed to one of its oldest conventions: that an independent candidate cannot win the presidency, that it is foolish to try, and so the only thing left is to acquiesce to Trump.

If the shoe were on the other foot, would Trump give up? Of course not. He’d defy this seemingly inviolable principle and forge ahead. And who knows? Maybe he’d win. If his candidacy teaches us anything, it should be that the conventional rules of politics apply .  .  . until they no longer do. Electoral history is littered with examples—the contests of 1824, 1860, 1896, 1912, 1932, 1952, 1980, and 1992 tell the same story: When the old rules stop working, surprising things can happen.

The Era of Good Feelings seemed to mark the end of party politics altogether, but the election of 1824 split the presidential vote four ways, scrambled the old calculus, and led to the second party system. Before 1860, it was unthinkable to win the White House without a southern state, but Abraham Lincoln did precisely that. After the Civil War, most elections were settled by a few thousand votes—until William McKinley won by five points in 1896, becoming the first Republican to win New York City. His victory inaugurated a generation of Republican rule, and the Democrats were consigned to second-tier status. But the GOP fractured in 1912 and handed the White House to Woodrow Wilson. Seemingly unbreakable party hegemonies were also broken in 1932, 1952, and 1992. Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980 defied the conventional wisdom that a conservative Republican could not win the White House.

Prior to these watershed events, the rules of politics seemed very clear. But political laws are unlike the laws of nature. They can change, as circumstances do.

So what about the rule that an independent can’t win? Well, it is not exactly fair to say it has never happened. The election of 1824 saw the total breakdown of normal politics, and the official nominee of the Jeffersonian Republicans finished in third place, behind two “independent” candidates. In 1860, both the Whig and Democratic parties split, and the four-way race that cycle is not explicable by our contemporary partisan categories.

Moreover, two elections that featured strong independent bids—1912 and 1992—tell a complicated story. Wilson’s victory in 1912 was broad, but not deep. He won the same share as William Jennings Bryan had in the Democratic wipeout of 1908, and the margin between Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt was sufficiently narrow in enough states that a shift of just half a million votes would have handed TR the victory. In 1992 Ross Perot led in the polls at crucial junctures, but his erratic, unprofessional campaign turned enough voters off to aid Clinton, who won the same share of the vote as Michael Dukakis did in the Democratic disaster of 1988. Neither 1912 or 1992 was especially close—but they were close enough that the seemingly impossible could have happened. If TR had had better relations with the New York Republican party and moved just a handful of votes in the West, he could have won. If Perot had not dropped out then come back into the race, and had selected a more conventional vice presidential nominee, he could have won.

Perhaps the biggest reason there has not been an independent victory is that precious few leaders have the intrepid spirit to give it a try. That’s really what sets TR and Perot apart. They came as close as they did because they dared to go against the grain. The maxim about independent candidacies was just as strong in 1912 and 1992 as it is today, but the two sensed that this was a rule ripe to be broken. Perhaps it still is—if somebody has the courage to try.

As TR famously put it:

An independent candidate with TR’s plucky determination to stand and fight in the arena would be a welcome development for weary conservatives. And why can’t it work this year? The verdict of history is not nearly as definitive as we have been led to believe. Moreover, the two major-party candidates in this cycle are incredibly unpopular, and Trump has demonstrated that the country seems to be in a mood to dispense with the conventions of politics.

Maybe Trump’s biggest advantage is his opponents’ stubborn insistence on following the traditional rules. Maybe the way to beat him is to channel some of TR’s contrariness and derring-do, to rally behind a leader who is willing to stand in the arena and strive valiantly for conservative principles. Sure, the odds of victory are low, but that would not have dismayed Teddy Roosevelt, and his is an example worth following.

Jay Cost is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard and the author of A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption.